‘I fear the Greeks, even when they bear gifts’
Virgil,
The Aeneid,
Book II, 48
Over the Ligurian Sea, fifty kilometres southeast of Monaco 20th March - 2.21 a.m.
Rigged for black, they had headed west, hitting the coast just north of Civitavecchia and then hugging it as far as Livorno, sawing in and out of the jagged shoreline to stay under the radar. Once there, they had struck out across the sea, the city’s bright lights fading behind them to a gossamer twinkle, until there was nothing but them and the water’s empty shadow and the echo of the rotors as they skimmed low across the waves.
Occasionally the moon would emerge from behind a cloud, and for a few moments Allegra could see their spectral reflection in the swell, a ghost ship carried on neon whitecaps. Then, just as quickly, it vanished again and the darkness would open beneath them once more, an endless abyss into which they seemed to be falling without moving.
Allegra glanced over at Tom, but like her he seemed to be enjoying the flight’s noisy stillness, his dirt-smudged face pressed to the window, alone with his thoughts. She wondered if, like her, he could still feel the plastic against his skin, moist and warm, still feel his fingernails lifting as he scrabbled at the chamber’s earthen walls.
She hated to admit it, but she had been scared back there. Not danger scared, where adrenaline kicks in and instinct takes over before you even have a chance to think. Dying scared, where there is time for the mind to wander long and lonely corridors of fear and uncertainty. The sort of fear that she imagined lingered in the portentous shadows of a surgeon’s forced cheerfulness or a radiologist’s brave smile.
Perhaps this explained why she found something strangely comforting about the engine’s noise now, its animal roar having settled into a contented purr that was a welcome contrast to the ticking contemplation of death that she had endured in that tomb. A reminder that she was alive. That she had escaped.
Not that she was sure what they had escaped to, exactly, or who had helped them. Clearly somebody had their reasons for wanting them alive and continuing their investigation. Less clear was who that might be. De Luca, perhaps; if she was right about D’Arcy working for him. But then, as Tom had suggested, it seemed unlikely that he would
order Contarelli to kill them, only to dispatch a search-and-rescue team a few hours later. But if not him, who? The FBI? Tom had told her that he had worked with them before. Was this them protecting their best chance of finding Jennifer’s killer? She shook her head ruefully. The truth was, there was no way of telling.
More certain was her growing trust in Tom. He would never stop, she knew, never rest until he had brought the Delian League down and punished whoever had killed his friend. Part of her almost felt jealous of this fierce loyalty. Did she have anyone who would have done the same for her? Probably not. The realisation strengthened her resolve. If she didn’t follow this through to the end, wherever it led her, no one else would. And then Gallo would have won.
Tom suddenly tapped the window.
‘Monte Carlo.’
The city had appeared out of the night, a stepped pyramid of lights that clung to the steep mountainside with concrete claws, its jaws open to the sea. The helicopter banked to the left and climbed over the yachts anchored in the harbour before swooping back towards the heliport, a narrow cantilevered shelf that hung over the water. It landed with a bump and then dusted off as soon as their feet had hit the tarmac, climbing steeply until the clatter of its blades was nothing but a warm whisper on the wind.
The heliport was shut for the night, but someone had seen to it that the gate set into the hurricane fence had been left unlocked. The keys left for them in the envelope opened an X5 parked on the street outside the deserted terminal building. Inside, Allegra found a bag of casual clothes and two suit carriers - one containing Tom’s shirt and suit, the other a knee-length black dress that they had clearly managed to lay their hands on in the hour or so it had taken them to fly here. Shoes, underwear, cufflinks, comb, make-up - they’d thought of everything, and she knew without even looking that it would all fit. These people, whoever they were, knew what they were doing.
‘Ladies first?’ Tom offered, closing the door after her and then turning his back.
It was only when she had undressed that she realised how filthy she was; her face, arms and clothes were covered in stains, dirt and small cuts and grazes that she had unconsciously picked up somewhere between Li’s oily workshop, Cavalli’s foam-filled car, Contarelli’s gruesome basement and the empty tomb. Grabbing some wipes, she quickly cleaned herself up as best she could, applied some make-up, and then wriggled into the dress. She checked herself in the mirror before she got out. Not bad, apart from her hair, which would need six months and several very expensive haircuts to get it looking even half decent. But it had served its purpose.
She got out and swapped places with Tom, hoping that his raised eyebrows were a sign of silent appreciation. Five minutes later and he too was ready to go.
‘Want to drive?’ Tom offered, holding out the keys. ‘Only this time you have to promise not to crash into anything.’
She refused with a smile.
‘What’s the fun in that?’
The casino was only a short drive from the heliport, although, in a country of only 485 acres, everything was, almost by definition, close to everything else. It was still busy, a succession of Ferraris and Lamborghinis processing slowly across the Place du Casino to give the tourists enough time to gawp. Turning in by the central fountain, its bubbling waters glowing like molten glass in the floodlights, they waited in line behind a Bentley Continental for the valet to take their car.
The casino itself was an elaborate, baroque building, its façade dominated by two flamboyant towers either side of the main entrance and encrusted with statues and ornate architectural reliefs. The floodlights had given it a rather gaudy appearance, clothing it in amber in some places and gold in others, while a lush green copper roof was just about visible through the gaps between the towers. A central clock, supported by two bronze angels, indicated it had just gone three.
‘You still haven’t told me why we’re here,’ Allegra complained as Tom led her into the marble entrance hall to the ticket office.
He glanced across with an indulgent smile as he paid their entrance fee, as if this was a somehow rather foolish question.
‘To play blackjack, of course.’
Casino de Monte Carlo, Monaco 20th March - 3.02 a.m.
There was a compelling logic to the casino’s layout: the further inside you ventured, the more money you stood to lose. Although a simple conceit, it had, over the years, led to the evolution of a complex and intuitive ecosystem whereby those at the bottom of the food chain rarely strayed into the territory of the higher, predatory mammals.
This could be easily observed in the way that the outer rooms were mainly inhabited by sunburnt British and German tourists, their clothes creased from having been kept at the bottom of a suitcase for the best part of a week in anticipation of a ‘posh’ night out, their modest losses borne with thinly disguised resentment. The middle rooms, meanwhile, were populated by immaculately dressed Italian and French couples - ‘locals’ who had driven up on a whim
and who seemed to play the tables with an almost effortless familiarity. The inner rooms, finally, had been overrun by Russians; for the most part overweight men dressed in black and clutching cigars as they would a bayonet, accompanied by daggerthin blonde women half their age wearing white to better show off their tans. Here they bet with an indifference that verged on boredom, the roulette table lavished with chips, each spin of the wheel a desperate plea to feel something, anything, in a life blunted by having forgotten what it means to want something but not be able to buy it.
As they walked through from the Salle Europe, Tom found his thoughts wandering. He had tried to resist it as long as he could, but it was hard not to be drawn back to the Amalfi, not to let the fairground flash of the slot machines and the piano play of the roulette ball grab him by the throat and catapult him back through time, as if he had stumbled into some strange parallel world.
It was as if he was watching a film. The echo of the shot being fired, Jennifer crumpling to the floor, the smell of blood and cordite, that first, disbelieving scream. A film that he could play, pause, forward and rewind at any time, although it would never allow him to go further back than the crack of the gunshot. That’s when everything had started.
‘Tom?’ The mirrored room slowly came back into focus and he saw Allegra’s hand laid in concern on his shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’ He nodded, the scream still silently ringing in his ears even though now, on closer inspection what struck him most about this place on reflection was less its similarity to the Amalfi than its differences.
Here, they played Chemin de Fer not Punto Banco, for example. The poker tables were marked in French not English. The roulette wheel had one zero, not two. And the air was seared with the bittersweet tang of a century and a half of fortunes being lost and made. Small differences on their own, perhaps, but pieced together and set amidst the jewelled chandeliers, stained-glass windows and ornate sculptures that adorned the casino’s soaring rococo interior, they breathed a soul into this place that Kezman could never hope to buy, and revealed the Amalfi in all its silicone-enhanced artifice.
‘Deal me in.’ Tom sat at an empty blackjack table and placed a five-thousand-euro chip on the box in front of him.
The croupier looked up and smiled. In his early forties, he was a tall precise man, gaunt and with a pianist’s long, cantilevered fingers.
‘Monsieur Kirk. Very good to see you again.’
He dealt him a king and a five.
‘You too, Nico.’
‘I was sorry to hear about your loss.’ For a moment Tom thought he meant Jennifer, before realising he must be referring to his father. That was almost three years ago now. It showed how long it had been since he was last here.
‘Thank you.
Carte
.’
‘You don’t twist on fifteen,’ Allegra whispered next to him. ‘Even I know that.’
‘Seven,’ the croupier intoned. ‘Twenty-two.’ He scooped the cards and Tom’s chip off the baize.
‘See?’ Allegra exclaimed.
‘I’ve come for my gear,’ Tom said in a low voice, placing another five-thousand-euro chip down. ‘Is it still here?’
‘Of course.’ Nico nodded, dealing him an ace and a seven.
‘Eighteen. You need to stick again,’ Allegra urged. Tom ignored her.
‘
Carte
.’
The croupier deftly flicked an eight over to him.
‘Twenty-six.’
Allegra tutted angrily.
‘You don’t like losing, do you?’ Tom said, amused by the expression on her face.
‘I don’t like losing stupidly,’ she corrected him.
‘Perhaps madame is right,’ the croupier ventured. ‘Have you tried the Roulette Anglaise?’
‘Actually, I was hoping to bump into an old friend here. Ronan D’Arcy. Know him?’
The croupier paused, then nodded.
‘He’s been in a few times. Good tipper.’ A pause. ‘Ugly business.’
‘Very ugly,’ Tom agreed. ‘Any idea where I can find him?’
Nico shrugged, then shook his head.
‘No one’s seen him since the fire.’
‘Where did he live?’
‘Up on the Boulevard de Suisse. You can’t miss it.’
‘Can you get me in?’
The croupier checked again that no one was listening, then nodded.
‘Meet me in the Café de Paris in ten minutes.’
‘I’ll need a couple of phones too,’ Tom added. ‘Here -’ He threw another five-thousand-euro chip down. ‘For your trouble.’
‘
Merci, monsieur
, but four should cover everything.’ He slid a one-thousand-euro chip back, then signalled at the floor manager that he needed to be relieved.
‘You lost both those hands on purpose, didn’t you?’ Allegra muttered as they made their way back towards the entrance.
‘He charges a ten-thousand-euro fee.’
‘Fee for what?’
‘For looking after this -’ He held up the chip that the croupier had returned to him in change. Two numbers had been scratched on to its reverse. ‘Come on.’
Reaching the main entrance lobby, Tom led her
over to the far side of the galleried space, where a mirrored door on the right-hand side of the room gave on to a marble staircase edged by an elaborate cast-iron balustrade. They headed down it, the temperature fading, until they eventually found themselves in a narrow corridor that led to the men’s toilets on one side and the women’s on the other.
Checking that they hadn’t been followed, Tom opened the small cupboard under the stairs and removed two brass stands joined by a velvet rope and an
Hors Service
sign. Pinning the sign to the door, he cordoned the toilet entrance off and then disappeared inside, reappearing a few moments later with a smile.
‘It’s empty.’
‘Is that good?’ she asked, an impatient edge to her voice as she followed him inside.
The room was as he remembered it: four wooden stalls painted a pale yellow to his right, six porcelain urinals separated by frosted-glass screens to his left. Unusually, the centre of the room was dominated by a large white marble counter with two sinks set on each set of a double-sided arched mirror. The walls were covered in grey marble tiles.
‘Six across, three down.’
He showed her the numbers scratched on to the chip and then turned to face the urinals and began to count, starting in the far left corner and moving six tiles across, then dropping three tiles down.
‘I make it this one,’ he said, stepping forward and pointing at a tile over the third urinal.
‘Me too,’ Allegra agreed with a curious frown.
Snatching up the silver fire extinguisher hanging just inside the door, he swung it hard against the tile they had picked out. There was a dull clunk as it caved in.
‘It’s hollow,’ Allegra breathed.
Tom swung the extinguisher against the wall again, the hole widening as the tiles around the opening cracked and fell away until he had revealed a rectangular space. Throwing the extinguisher to the floor, he reached into the space and hauled out a large black holdall.
‘How long’s that been here?’
‘Three or four years?’ he guessed. ‘Nico paid off the builder the casino hired to re-tile this room. It was Archie’s idea. A precaution. Enough to get us operational again if we ever had to cut and run. He chose here and a few other places around the world where we had people we could trust.’
Allegra leaned forward as he unzipped the bag.
‘What’s inside?’
‘Batteries, tools, drill, borescope, magnetic rig, backpack,’ he said quickly, sorting through its contents. ‘Money, guns,’ he continued, taking one of the two Glocks out, checking the magazine was full and placing it in his pocket.
‘And this?’ Allegra asked, frowning as she
took out a small object the size of a cigarette packet.
‘Location transmitter. Three-mile radius,’ He pulled out the receiver, slotted a fresh battery in place and then turned it on to show her. ‘Stick it on, if you like. At least that way I won’t lose you.’
‘Don’t worry, you won’t get rid of me that easily.’ She smiled, tossing it back.
‘Good. Then you can give me a hand with this up the stairs. Nico will be waiting by now.’